Game News Ostranauts now published by Kitfox Games, releasing in 2025

[Infinitron]

Tags: Blue Bottle Games; Kitfox Games; Ostranauts

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1022980/view/4584188879515294936

Please welcome our new friends at Kitfox Games, community manager Alexandra and director Tanya. Some of you may know them for their publishing work with the devs of Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud. We've known them for a while through our indie dev circles. And today we’d like to announce that Kitfox will be helping us reach 1.0 launch next year in 2025. We hope that this new collaboration will not only give us the support we need to focus on developing the remainder of our roadmap, but also entice more people to check out Ostranauts.

We've put together a new trailer to show the latest state of the game, to announce the upcoming launch timing, and reveal the new publishing partnership. Please give it a watch, and share it with anyone you think might enjoy it.

Our Across the System Update 0.14 is now on the Steam default branch. You can read all the patch notes and update information here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1022980/view/6647962234211919914

Speaking of updates, here is the new version of our roadmap, outlining our development plan leading up to 2025, and beyond. Our hope is that by 1.0, you will have a robust feature set and ample content to play with, and that we will be able to continue to update and improve Ostranauts well into the post-1.0 future.

What else can you expect from this new partnership?

Of course we'll continue to post patch notes and other updates, but you might also be hearing more about community events and other exciting things we are doing with Kitfox’s help. You’re welcome to join the Ostranauts channel on the Kitfox Discord server, as there will be many Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud fans who might be intrigued by what Ostranauts offers, and they could use an experienced scavenger to offer tips and tricks.

We will be hosting a special stream on the Blue Bottle Twitch channel to commemorate the announcement tomorrow, September 5th, at 1pm Pacific (8pm UTC). Alexandra from Kitfox will be joining us as we discuss the latest .14 patch and future updates.

If you’d like to ask us questions, there is also an AMA scheduled on r/games on September 10th, from 9-11 am PST. Daniel, Joshu, Corey, and Kitfox will be around, so join us if you’d like to discuss this update, the partnership, or Ostranauts development in general.

You can also sign up for our email newsletter for updates directly to your inbox!

And as always, we’d love to hear what YOU think about this news, the new update, or even what you'd like to see post-1.0. We couldn't have gotten this far without your help, and we'll keep doing what we can to make Ostranauts your go-to place for noir spaceship-life gaming.​

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Early access wasn't sustainable enough they had to find a publisher?

 

[Infinitron]

Early access wasn't sustainable enough they had to find a publisher?

They had one before - Modern Wolf. (Yes, the Mechajammer publisher)

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Early access wasn't sustainable enough they had to find a publisher?

They had one before - Modern Wolf. (Yes, the Mechajammer publisher)

Oh goddammit.

 

[Beastro]

Austro-Hungarianauts.

 

[Sardine Dev Poster]

It's completely pozzed, don't bother paying for it. I'll admit it's interesting but don't come off some shit like Dustborn about how awful it was for the pozz and then pay for this. They need a publisher because although they hate to admit it, the pozz is a dealbreaker for most. If you do buy it though, be a bro and mod it to get rid of the fugly character customization shit, and buy it on sale.

 

[udm]

It's completely pozzed, don't bother paying for it. I'll admit it's interesting but don't come off some shit like Dustborn about how awful it was for the pozz and then pay for this. They need a publisher because although they hate to admit it, the pozz is a dealbreaker for most. If you do buy it though, be a bro and mod it to get rid of the fugly character customization shit, and buy it on sale.

And of course, they went with the publisher that published Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud

 

[MrBuzzKill]

It doesn't have the draw of NEO Scavenger for me personally. There's nothing to latch on to where I could say "ooh, I would like to play this"

 

[gooseman]

There's some hope of the game being good. Kitfox are freeloaders though, they leeched the shit out of dwarf fortress. Their "publishing" was non-existent marketing for a game that doesn't need marketing, because it's mentioned in descriptions of nearly every major indie release in the past decade and shilling their games through unrelated steam announcements. I guess they also made a steam page, something a child could do. Yeah, that's, like, 20% cut worthy, after steam's 30%.

 

[Mortmal]

Early access wasn't sustainable enough they had to find a publisher?

If you're not part of the inner circle, you won't get any media coverage. Journalists won't review the game unless you pay them, and it's the same for most YouTubers. So, it's about kowtowing to the dominant ideology in hopes of making a few sales.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Austro-Hungarianauts.

 

[Vulpes]

At least the new trailer is direct about what Ostranauts is trying to be ("A hardcore space salvager simulation"), as opposed to the old Steam page and EA trailer that were vague enough to make it sound like there's a lot more to it that there actually is. I tried it about two years ago and uninstalled it after only a few hours

What I expected: a hybrid of Star Traders: Frontiers and The Sims
What I got: a space scavenging game with no combat whatsoever, where piloting your spaceship with janky controls is 80% of the gameplay and almost every character is a randomly generated pozzed abomination

No wonder they ran out of money and had to go looking for a publisher. The game is boring as shit and has been in EA almost as long as Kenshi. It's also very different from NeoScavanger which makes it all the more surprising that the two are supposed to take place within the same universe.